


Friends Don't Let Friends Become Supervillains

by somekindoflark



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Character, Crack, asexual balder, queerplatonic besties are for life not just asgard, sweater vests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 21:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1616990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somekindoflark/pseuds/somekindoflark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s vaguely aware that there are more explosions than normal for the next few years, but experience has taught him that that sort of thing can be left to people like Thor and the new warrior friends he’s seen advertised at McDonald’s (Balder has the Black Widow; his secretary knitted her a little reindeer cardigan for Christmas).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends Don't Let Friends Become Supervillains

Sif frowns.  “This will end in the Allfather.”

This is true.

Because their parents have with many lectures (Odin) and bribes (Frigga) taught them to be fair, Loki and Thor take turns picking adventures.  Thor’s nearly always end in a shout for Heimdall, but it’s not like they’re usually desperate, it would’ve taken the dragon at least another ten minutes to break down the barricade they’d put up, there was no need for Heimdall to rush.  Loki’s turns don’t usually in disaster (at least, not any disaster that their parents learn about), but when they do it’s _spectacular_ and usually consists of Loki and Thor and whomever else they’ve dragged along screaming in total terror for Odin and Frigga and Heimdall and – but they are not allowed to ever remind Sif of this, she _knows where they sleep_ – “Moooooommyyyyyyyyyyyyy!”

Sif bounces.  “It’ll be worth it though.  _Midgard_.  My brother says there are dragons there and lots of frost giants and crazy humans with gold palaces.  We can bring swords and a picnic and-”

Balder is not so easy.  He has to be lured in with Loki’s and Thor’s promises to carry ten notebooks each to record his observations of Midgard _and_ Thor’s solemn vow that they won’t track a blood-thirsty monster all the way inside the cave, just to the first part so they can find the crushed skeletal remains of previous explorers, _and_ Loki’s oath that he won’t leave Balder behind to get eaten by a ravenous beast even if Balder does eat too many tarts and is thus too heavy for Loki to drag easily.

“I do not eat too many tarts!” Balder says indignantly.

Sif, Loki, and Thor cast pointed looks at Balder’s midsection. 

Balder casts a pointed look at Thor’s head.

Loki and Sif concede that this is fair.

Loki has chosen Balder as his best friend (besides Thor, of course, but brothers don’t count, they’re just brothers) because he’s nearly as smart as Loki, just as good at magic, and responds to danger not by screaming (Thor, who says it’s _manly bellowing_ and that father does the same if you lie in wait under his throne for hours and then suddenly bite his legs) or by fainting dramatically into the lap of the nearest girl (Fandral), but by – Loki still cannot believe there is someone else who does this – going very still and quiet (and having an occasional breathing attack, but Loki is used to that and knows the spells, so that’s all right, and anyway Balder doesn’t have them half as much now that he’s gotten used to being dropped over cliffs by giants and tied naked to troll spits).

“We won’t have another chance to visit Midgard for ages,” Loki says.  “Think about all the things we’ll see.  Strange creatures, Midgardians, huge forests, wild beasts-”

“Dangerous frost giants everyone is going there to hunt down before they _kill everyone_ ,” Balder points out.

“Libraries,” Sif says.

Loki smiles.  “ _Lots_ of libraries.”

 

 

There are not libraries.

That is a _lie_.

It does not go well either, but Balder was never expecting that, just to find more than _ten books_ on the _entire trip_.

“You’ll see!” Loki’s new archenemy screams after them.  “I’m going to tell all sorts of stories about you, Loki Odinson.  I’m going to say that you’re a coward and a traitor and that you- you- you gave birth to a _horse_!”

“It’d still be better than your mom!” Thor shouts back.

Odin smacks him on the back of the head.

Thor sticks out his tongue.

Odin mutters something about Frigga never being allowed to go away ever again.

 

 

Years later, Odin will return from Midgard with a carefully guarded book, which he will say is too dangerous for anyone but Frigga to look at.  Oddly, peals of laughter will echo from their bedchamber for hours that night, though next morning at breakfast Frigga will attempt to feed Loki the entire spread and she and Odin will tell their sons just how proud of both of them they are and just how much they love them and just how much they do not approve of the improper use of needles, snakes, and overlibidinous farm animals as Loki attempts to finish his essay on the initial effect of the Bifrost on trade with the elves and Thor struggles valiantly to rescue even one roll from his mother’s clutches (he fails; Loki waddles for the rest of the day).

 

 

Years and years later, they will be allowed to look at the book – Loki and Thor and Balder and Sif – and Thor will laugh so hard he cries and Loki will sulk for days and Balder will spend two weeks trying to figure out what mistletoe even _is_ and Sif’s mouth will tighten ominously because the stories about her are boring in comparison to _giant snakes_ and _the end of the world_.  And then they’ll all sneak down to Midgard, just the four of them, for what Balder will in retrospect realize was the last time Loki didn’t have to be the responsible one, because he and Thor were both still _completely insane_ and that Queen Elizabeth was just as bad.

By that year’s end, Balder will be safely enrolled in Asgard’s best university, studying northern Midgardian cultures and traditions.  He’ll try to get Loki to join the department too, but Loki isn’t a true scholar, not really, and so he ends up splitting his time between impressing the economics department and joining in the smiling backstabbing that is the diplomatic one.  They still see each other, of course, and they can’t help but see Thor, who is spectacularly failing every course but elvish culture (he’s sleeping with both professors) and whom Loki will one day strangle for crimes against knowledge if an exasperated Odin doesn’t get there first, as well as Sif, who is doing something with mathematics and engineering that involves a lot of explosions, another student called Hogun who also dreams of being a famous warrior, and Fandrall and Volstagg refusing to help her ever again after the second time she accidentally blows off their eyebrows and Loki and Balder are laughing too hard to regrow them before the feast.

 

 

Years and years and years later, during what Thor has taken to calling with unnerving tact Loki’s Troubled Time (Sif can hear the capitals, everyone can hear the capitals, even _Volstagg_ can and does proud air quotes) and after what everyone else is calling That Time Loki Threw A Fit On Midgard, Balder is deep in his fifth year of field research. 

In a world where Balder is less of a scholar and more inclined toward civic duty and other things that end in oddly hysterical people asking him how he couldn’t have noticed that Thor was baiting an entire fire giant division into a fight while Loki in the guise of Sif hit on every person in sight and everyone failing to understand that Balder had just found the most fascinating scroll and so hadn’t heard the shouting or noticed the total destruction of the city and twelve marriages until Volstagg slung him over his shoulder and announced that they were leaving-

\- in that world Balder receives 16 visits from the CIA (Loki), 10 from the FBI (Loki), 62 from SHIELD (Loki), 3 from his parents (grandchildren), 29 from Homeland Security (Loki), and 4 from the Asgardian university to ask him if he’s _sure_ he doesn’t remember where he put the invisible library (he doesn’t; he feels quite badly about it).

In the real world where Balder is exhausted from people refusing to leave him alone with his work, he tells everyone he’s off to research some truly fascinating ancient dwarf farming methods regarding single ear south continent double-stalk night corn’s lesser-variety moon-tilled triple-seeded fungus, hugs all of his friends and family good-bye, and then slips down to Midgard on one of the paths any magic-user who was friends with Loki at university knows (someone really should tell Odin about them, Balder thinks for the fiftieth time as he’s leaving, then promptly forgets twenty-two seconds later when he sees a star shaped like a rabbit).

 

 

He’s vaguely aware that there are more explosions than normal for the next few years, but experience has taught him that that sort of thing can be left to people like Thor and the new warrior friends he’s seen advertised at McDonald’s (Balder has the Black Widow; his secretary knitted her a little reindeer cardigan for Christmas).

Loki looks too thin though.

Balder does worry about that.

After a lot of thought, most of it while walking absent-mindedly through the campus where he teaches, giving seminars that seem to be much more popular than even Elizabethan poetry warrants, and trying on different sweater vests at the mall, he fills a box with the earth equivalents of Loki’s favorite treats: crab cakes, marmalade, truffles, and the spicy beef jerky Loki always swore was packed purely for Thor.  He writes: TO LOKI - CARE OF THOR.  FROM BALDER.  NOT POISONED (I THINK) on the top, addresses it to Tony Stark, and mails it from a post office a thousand miles away.

Thor conscientiously hands it to Loki during their next encounter. Loki eats two crab cakes and a box of truffles as he destroys the Statue of Liberty.  Thirty million viewers watch Nick Fury twitch.  Balder smiles happily and buys Loki a membership in a monthly cheese club.

 

 

It’s spring, and he’s at an airport on his way back from a particularly vicious academic conference.  Balder knows how to defend himself.  Not to the princes’ standards, of course, because as Sigyn says that’s what Mjolnir and Thor’s astounding lack of survival instinct are for, but well enough to look after himself on the occasions when Loki and Thor decided that a battlefield is the perfect place to resolve their latest sibling grievances through the time-honored method of screaming at each other and hurling whatever sharp object is nearest at the other’s head. 

Unfortunately, he also has an ipad.

This means that he only realizes he is being attacked (or, in fact, that five people have stormed the waiting area, alarms are blaring, there are nine bodies on the ground, and a masked man has been screaming at him for the past minute) when someone shoots him.

 

 

He wakes up once to blood and sirens.

Once to the desperate tang of magic.

Once to antiseptic, blood, plastic, gas.

He blinks his eyes open again in a Midgardian hospital room.

Someone is in the room with him.

It’s Loki.

Loki is too thin, too tense, too pale, bloody, his hands like ice where they’re clutching Balder’s as if Balder is the only thing that matters, a cracked mask already falling over his face.  “I’ll leave you now,” Loki says.

Balder forces his eyes to focus.  “Why?”

Loki stares at him.  “I… what I did.  What I have done.”

“It’s not like it was a surprise,” Balder says.  He’s long known that Thor and Loki are crazy (Balder, like most of Asgard, blames some combination of Odin and the water).

Loki draws back.

“Don’t-”  Balder coughs.  It’s a while before he can stop, and the pain is making him dizzy, though not enough to miss Loki calling for a doctor.  “Swear you won’t leave me,” he says. _"Swear."_

He can’t read the expression on Loki’s face.  Even if his vision weren’t fading into a fuzzy, graying tunnel he doesn’t think he could, because Loki has always had many emotions and the one on the surface is rarely the strongest or alone, but he can hear the words, and they and the hand clenching tighter around his are all that matter, because Loki would not lie to him, not truly, not like this.

“I swear.”

Balder is going to need so many therapy books.


End file.
